Field Notes are an American company who specialise in notebooks and memo books for use in … the field. They also release variations on their signature notebooks with pretty designs and different types of paper inside. The End Papers edition is one of their quarterly releases for 2018, a set of two journals in blue and green. Notably, the End Papers are journals rather than memo books, intended to be more durable than...

On September 21st, I attended the Pelikan Hubs 2018 in my city of Christchurch. It was the second time I’ve attended, and our little group had grown by one (to a total of six!) since the year before. We’re a small country, so unlike America, there are only two cities in New Zealand that held a Hub this year. If you’re unfamiliar with what the Pelikan Hubs are, it’s an...

J. Herbin Vert de Gris is a blue/green-grey ink that joined the core Herbin range in 2018. The name literally means "green of grey", but English speakers might be more familiar with the term verdigris, which refers to the blue-green colour of the patina that forms on metals containing copper.

J. Herbin Corail des Tropiques is one of the new Herbin inks that joined the core line in 2018, alongside a few other interesting colours. True to its name, it's a warm, bright orange-pink, and comes in the standard Herbin 30ml glass bottle. It's more vibrant than I expected out of a Herbin ink, with some decent saturation, and fairly readable despite its brightness.

Organics Studio’s Vintage Writing Fluid Series was inspired by pens that are difficult to clean. They’re basically perfect for lazy fools like me who leave ink in pens for long periods of time and then have regrets. They’re designed to be low maintenance and unfussy, in other words. Willow Green is part of a series of eight, released in 2016. It comes as a 55ml bottle. Organics Studio has a...

When I first saw the Opus 88 Picnic fountain pens, I was struck by the vibrancy of the colours and how they seemed to glow against the white backdrop. After being able to handle one in person, I can confidently say that it’s not just good product photography and pretty lighting. The Opus 88 Picnic is just a damn pretty pen. I’m not going into the packaging in great detail....

The Ernest Hemingway Santiago’s Sea Blue is a newer entry in Organics Studio‘s Masters of Writing series, released earlier in 2018. I was lukewarm to the idea of it at first, though I’ve liked the other OS sheeners I own. But what sets the Hemingway Santiago’s Sea apart from all the red-sheening blues out there? Ink was probably what got me excited about fountain pens the most. Sheening inks are...

I’m a newcomer to the hobby of fountain pens by any definition of the word. I first became interested in fountain pens in 2017 when I noticed a classmate using a Lamy Safari during a lecture. I consider myself a digital person, but I’ve always loved stationery and the physical act of writing things down. After badgering my classmate for information about his pens, I started doing some research. The...